glimpses of the past ...

I spent three hours last night munching peanuts and sipping beer at a corner bar with a friend I haven't seen in almost two decades ... he is one of the cast of characters who peopled the neighbourhood I called I home for the first two decades of my life and who still haunt the recollections and memories of my childhood and youth I share with my children and friends ... for a time it was like standing in the holiness of a Church and remembering WHY it is so important and sacred ...

We got caught up on where our lives have taken us ... sharing the obligatory tales of our respective children, careers and life circumstances ... then we dove headlong into the stories and mis-adventures of growing up in the neighbourhood bordered by Pleasant Drive, Burritt Street, Willow Street and Devon Street ... to the south was the busy-ness of Ontario, and to the North was the vast open space of the Stratford Golf and Country Club ...

He was older ... the engineer behind the many forts and play structures that rose and fell and were destroyed in the forest just beyond the fringe of my back yard ... he was the creative architect who envisioned the first Lego-City that sat for YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS on a 4X8 sheet of plywood in my mom's basement ... he was the oldest of our gang that ebbed and flowed over the years ... and it was good to revisit the past and recall the other characters and fools we called friend and foe ...

And yet in that recollection was the steadfast realization that the past, while good to visit and revel in periodically, is best left in the past remembered but not lived in ... The past has informed my present, and will guide my future in so far as it educated my future ... but I will never try to reclaim past glories, only learn from past mistakes ...

Visiting the past reveals hidden gems from time to time as well ... last night my friend recalled that the last time he saw my father alive was the night that Dad died ... he and my brother were playing outside on the front step our house and he peeked in the living room windows ... he saw my dad lying asleep in the big rocking chair that now sits in my living room ... and asleep on Dad's chest was the nine month old son ...

The next morning when news spread that Dad has died his response was - "Not Sam!! I saw him last night ..."

One of my goals this week is to stand in the pavilion that marks the Canadian Memorial to fallen Police and Peace officers and read Dad's name ... and when I stand and read his name I'll think of the image that is forever etched in the mind of a friend: